The reference in this specification to any prior publication (or information derived from it), or to any matter which is known, is not, and should not be taken as an acknowledgment or admission or any form of suggestion that the prior publication (or information derived from it) or known matter forms part of the common general knowledge in the field of endeavour to which this specification relates.
When a person dies or has a life event that precludes them from managing their own affairs (e.g. head trauma), an executor has the unfortunate task of gathering documentation and information to handle the affairs of the deceased. Most people store documentation in a number of disparate locations which can make the task of handling affairs for the deceased extremely frustrating for the executor at an emotionally difficult time. In some instances, it may not even be possible to locate particular information which causes further frustration.
One potential solution is the use of a traditional steel safe which safely stores therein the documentation needed to handle the person's affairs in the event of death. However, safes also suffer drawbacks. Firstly, another person must be able to access the contents of the safe after the person dies, otherwise the documentation cannot be accessed. Due to this necessity, there is a serious security issue, in particular that another person has access to a central source of information which can be used for identity fraud. Additionally, there is a heavy burden for the contents of the safe to be current and accurate. However, the task of ensuring that the contents of the safe is current can be tedious. Whilst it is possible that another person can be given the task of keeping the documentation up to date, this again raises the same security issue above. Furthermore, it may be the wishes of the person to whom the documentation relates that a trusted party only have access to a portion of the documents which is not generally possible with a safe. Finally, it is desirable to ensure that contents of the safe are not altered without authorisation by the person to whom the documentation relates, i.e. the trusted party should only have read-only access. However, this is generally difficult to ensure with paper-based documents stored in a traditional safe.
Similar circumstances may arise when a corporation or other entity enters into liquidation (or some other defined and agreed event occurs), in which case a liquidator will need to gain access to documentation relating to the corporation to allow the liquidation process to proceed. Corporate entities may require the storage of large quantities of documentation of a number of different types, which can greatly complicate the task of the liquidator.
Entities may be accused of altering or deleting key documents in the event of a liquidation (or otherwise defined) event. In securely holding a read only escrowed version of the data, no valid accusations of alteration following the event, no valid accusations by directors and otherwise interested parties to modification and similar can be made.
Moreover, third parties may be excluded from access to documents that they have contractual rights to when a liquidation event occurs. Software source code can be protected from general access for example, but contract escrow can be provided to end users of the software if, for example, a firm was to enter into a liquidation event. This allows the originating company to secure access to their source code and/or other key documents and data whilst also offering a level of protection to the entities clients or other contracted parties.
Again, traditional physical document storage solutions, such as the use of a safe, suffer significant drawbacks when used to store documentation relating to a corporate entity. Along with the drawbacks already discussed above, it is not generally possible to ensure that another person that is able to access the contents of a safe is unable to alter the contents, and worse, it is not generally possible to determine if contents have been removed from the safe.
There is therefore a need to overcome or at least alleviate one or more of the above mentioned disadvantages or to provide a commercial alternative.